The War on Liberty

We dipped our toes over the weekend, Fellow Reckoner. Re-tested the waters. We wanted to know whether, over the past ten years, the public discourse regarding 9/11 and the subsequent “War on Terror” – waged both on foreign soil and, increasingly, against the liberties of American citizens at home – had shifted. A few questions…

Are people still waving flags and crying “traitor!” toward anyone with the inclination to question directives from the state’s military machine? Or has the mood become more reflective, more contemplative…more conducive to free and open discussion? After a decade at war, fighting on multiple fronts at a cost of trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives, has “war fatigue” finally set in?

“I originally was supportive of George Bush’s call for a war against Saddam Hussein,” responded one reader. “Since then I have come to be a huge believer in Ron Paul and have become disillusioned with our ‘war’ mentality. Thank you for your open dialogue.”

Wrote another, “…[I]t appears that I would be in agreement with the DR writers at this point, even though that would not have been the case 7-10 years ago. I was hoping for ‘getting the job done, and get it over with,’ but that hasn’t happened. Enough is enough now. But what should I have expected from a government that still has in place wool subsidies from WWII and a telephone tax from the Spanish-American war? We have now progressed far beyond ongoing taxes and ongoing subsidies to just plain ongoing wars.”

Setting aside the financial costs of “ongoing wars” abroad, there is also the cost in terms of personal liberty to be considered. Our mates over at The 5-Minute Forecast provided the following, disturbing observation last week…

The Patriot Act authorized “sneak and peek” search warrants – where you, the suspect, don’t have to be notified of the search until after the fact. If you’re a patriot and thought those powers would be used to fight terrorism, well you would be wrong.